Letter to you

Hi,

This is an impossible letter because it will never reach you. I know that very well, and that's why I'm writing it.

I assume it will be a while until I see you next. In the past year, we've all been trapped at home, so the only occasions I could see your face was on my computer screen. You were just a little bubble, among many others, with your name written in the bottom left corner. Most people didn't have their cameras on; you sometimes did. And whenever you did, I would stare at you--the tiny little digital you on Zoom.

Your beard grew longer and longer. You seemed distracted. You were completely bored of the stupid meeting.

Your hair grew longer and longer. I wanted to make a joke about it, but it would have been inappropriate if I'd just sent you a private message.

That would be weird indeed.

I wanted to reach out to you, email you, text you, ask you how you'd been. But you seemed to have disappeared from ordinary life.

You must be very busy with writing, I thought to myself.

Every little excuse with which I got to email you was exciting. I wrote three paragraphs, then deleted all of them. I wanted to tell you so much, but I was not in a position to talk to you like that.

You probably thought I was a moron, I thought to myself.

You probably wouldn't want anything to do with me. After all, my writing was so, so terrible; my essay was such a mess that you must have had a huge headache revising it.

But I wanted to hear from you, hear about you. I missed going to dinners with you and eating junk food together. We went to breweries and ordered random drinks for an adventure. We talked about everything holding random beers eating unhealthy amounts of french fries. I miss your silly little jokes that nobody else would laugh at. I know we are all on the same page most of the time because you would laugh at my silly jokes too that nobody else would laugh at.

We finally got to meet after a whole year. You had a handsome beard and a handsome ponytail. You were wearing my favourite linen-cotton blend shirt. I arrived early and you were next, so we got a few minutes alone. I wanted to gaze into your face, trying to tell if you were happy to see me.

You probably didn't care, I thought to myself.

Everybody else came. We had a good time. Then you casually mentioned that you'd be away for a year.

Congratulations, I said to you. I put on a poker face, the same as yours when I saw you earlier. I couldn't tell if you were happy to see me, and you couldn't tell that I was sad to hear you're going away.

I'd run out of excuses to contact you, so it is best that I write this letter that shall never reach you.

Perhaps next year, I'd write another one. It won't reach you anyways.

Best,

Me